New low-power processors round out Intel's Coffee Lake desktop series

Intel Coffee Lake

On top of announcing the first Intel Core i9 processors, the chip-maker took to filling out the rest of its Coffee Lake desktop CPU line.

Unfortunately, there aren’t any new high-end or extreme processors in this announcement. There's a new non-K version of the Intel Core i5-8600 that still comes with six cores and six threads, while below that are the Intel Core i5-8500 and Core i3-8300 to round out the series.

There’s also a full suite of new low-power T-series chips destined for the next generation of all-in-one PCs, which will likely include a new iMac this year, and perhaps an update to the Surface Studio. Despite being designed to sip power, it seems that the T-series of Coffee Lake processors will inherit the higher thread and core counts of their forbears.

Intel 300-series chipsets

Starting in April you can also expect to see more affordable motherboards, as Intel has just announced a bevy of new 300-series chipsets. Thus far every motherboard has featured the premium Z370 chipset, but now those will be joined by boards featuring the more price-conscious H370 and B360 chipsets.

Thankfully, even the lowest-end consumer chipset seems to be relatively well-equipped, with support for 12 PCIe 3.0 lanes, 4 USB-C 3.1 Gen 2 ports, Intel Optane memory and integrated Intel AC Wi-Fi. 

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Kevin Lee

Kevin Lee was a former computing reporter at TechRadar. Kevin is now the SEO Updates Editor at IGN based in New York. He handles all of the best of tech buying guides while also dipping his hand in the entertainment and games evergreen content. Kevin has over eight years of experience in the tech and games publications with previous bylines at Polygon, PC World, and more. Outside of work, Kevin is major movie buff of cult and bad films. He also regularly plays flight & space sim and racing games. IRL he's a fan of archery, axe throwing, and board games.